Page 4 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to go next door and check out their pool.”

I tucked my thumb into my belt loop and laughed. What the heck was this now? “Man, I got somewhere I need to be.” I didn’t. I planned on going home and searching up Theo Witherborne until I got sick of looking at his face on my phone’s cracked screen.

He dug into his pocket, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and waved it like a starting flag.

Who carries hundred-dollar bills in their back pockets? This guy, apparently. I wasn’t going to do this. It was dumb. He was laughing inside at my expense. Make the pool boy do something stupid for money. Of course that’s what this was. But you know, my bank balance was in the red, so I could really do with a hundred bucks, and all I had to do was walk across the yard and see if the neighbors had a pool. Seemed easy. And so what if it cost me some pride?

“You’re gonna do it, or you’d already have left,” he said, voice all cocky.

I huffed, and kept my boots glued to the path, still pretending I wasn’t about to walk back there and take him up on his offer. What can I say? There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do these days for a hundred bucks.

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged a shoulder. “I’m bored. And you can leave them your card.”

That was . . . a good idea. It didn’t make any sense, that he’d pay me to do this, but what was the worst that could happen?

I made my feet move and headed over to him. He stepped over the lounger and met me at the pool’s edge, holding the cash between two fingers, like a fishing hook I was about to bite. I had to look up a little to meet his gaze.

This close, I could see the little gleaming beads of sweat on his chest, caught the sunlight. His hair stuck up at an odd angle where he’d been resting on it, and he looked like a bad anime sketch, all angles and spikes, but stupid pretty with it.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“No catch.” Sunlight caught in his dark eyes, making their mischief shine.

“You want me to head next door and see if they have a pool? That’s it?” I glanced toward the neighbors’ property but couldn’t see beyond the towering palms and oversized hibiscus shrubs.

“Sure.” His teeth flashed white. Just normal-looking teeth, no fangs. But they had to be behind that smile somewhere, didn’t they?

I plucked the hundred-dollar bill from his fingers and shoved it into my pocket. Alright, better get it over with. Heading back around the pool, he fell into step beside me. So, he was the catch. He was coming along.

“What?” he asked, catching me looking sideways at him. “I gotta come along or you might lie and tell me you’ve seen the pool when you haven’t.”

“This is weird, man.”

He thrust his hands into his pockets and peered ahead, across the manicured lawns, sprinklers spreading water in fans, scattering rainbows. “You must have a real dull life if this is weird.”

I laughed, shaking my head.

“You should like this. Pools are your thing,” he said. “Pools, not people.”

He was definitely laughing on the inside. This was a big joke to him. Well, the joke was on him. All I had to do was cross the lawn, see the neighbors’ pool, and I was done here. Easiest hundred bucks ever.

“I don’t just do pools,” I said.

“Get out,” he said, with too much enthusiasm, his tone full of sparkling sarcasm.

“I clean cars too.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Wow. What a coincidence. I have a car.”

“Is that right?” I grinned. “Just one?”

“Yeah, just one . . . for every day of the week. Wanna see today’s?”

“Not really.” Now I really did laugh. He might actually be funny, when he wasn’t overdoing it.

He smiled too. His gaze lingered on mine, then skipped ahead. “Through the bushes there.”